Leaders from the higher education, library, publishing, technology and financial industries invest their time and energy to support our mission.

Gregory Avis

Rebecca M. Blank

Chancellor, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Rebecca M. Blank became chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in July 2013.

Blank’s experience blends a knowledge of economics with a history of leading through innovation, as well as a background as an educator and researcher. In taking the position of chancellor, Blank spoke of two distinct agendas for UW–Madison: providing the next generation with the skills necessary to succeed in the world’s changing economy, and maintaining the university’s position as a leader in innovation and research.

Leading Wisconsin’s flagship university represents a return to academia for Blank. From 2009 to 2013, she served in top positions at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She started as under secretary for economic affairs, and then was named deputy secretary and acting secretary of the agency, managing nearly 45,000 employees and a $10 billion budget. During her time at the agency, Blank not only led a large and complex organization, but also worked to promote economic development with an emphasis on connecting research and innovation with job creation and economic growth.

Blank brings strong academic credentials to the position of chancellor. She served as dean and professor of public policy and economics in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan from 1999 to 2008. In her role as dean, she launched such innovations as interdisciplinary graduate programs and an undergraduate public policy major. Before joining the Department of Commerce, she was a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy research think tank in Washington, D.C.

Earlier in her career, she was a member of the faculty at Northwestern University and Princeton University, as well as an assistant visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also spent two years, from 1997 to 1999, as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Blank is not a newcomer to UW–Madison. She was on campus in fall 1985 as a visiting fellow in the Department of Economics and the Institute for Research on Poverty and has attended many conferences and events here.

Blank was born in Missouri and later moved to Minnesota. She earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Minnesota, and a doctoral degree in economics from MIT.

She is married to Hanns Kuttner, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank. They have one daughter.

Peter J. Dougherty

Christopher L. Eisgruber

President, Princeton University

Christopher L. Eisgruber has served as Princeton University’s 20th president since July 2013. He is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values. Before becoming president, he served as Princeton's provost from 2004 to 2013 and as director of Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs from 2001 to 2004.

A renowned constitutional scholar, he is the author of The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process (Princeton 2007), Religious Freedom and the Constitution (co-authored with Lawrence G. Sager, Harvard 2007), and Constitutional Self-Government (Harvard 2001), as well as numerous articles in books and academic journals.

In 2014, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2001, he clerked for Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court, and then served on the faculty of the New York University School of Law for 11 years.

Eisgruber received an AB magna cum laude in physics from Princeton, an MLitt in politics from Oxford University, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. His wife, Lori Martin, is a distinguished securities litigator with the law firm Wilmer Hale, and his son, Danny, attends Princeton High School.

Ira H. Fuchs

President, BITNET, LLC

With more than 35 years higher education IT innovations, Ira H. Fuchs has directed Next Generation Learning Challenges since September 2010 and received an Excellence in Leadership Award from EDUCASE that same year.

As vice president for research in information technology with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2000 to 2010), Mr. Fuchs directed the foundation's grant-making in support of innovative applications of technology in higher education, museums, libraries, and the performing arts. Drawing on his ability to identify trends and assess technological potential, Mr. Fuchs was instrumental in the first prototype of JSTOR, and has helped the higher education community in pooling ideas, talents, and resources to create collaborative open-source software that has now reached tens of millions of users worldwide and saved institutions many millions of dollars.

Mr. Fuchs was one of the founding board members of the Internet Society and the Usenix Association and served as a trustee of EDUCOM, NYSERNET, Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF), JSTOR, Sarah Lawrence College, and Mills College. He has been a consultant to both private and public organizations, and has participated on higher education advisory boards for the National Science Foundation, Global Education and Learning Community (GELC), IBM, Apple, and NeXT. He currently serves on the boards of the Princeton Public Library, Ithaka Harbors, and The Philadelphia Contributionship.

Susan Gibbons

University Librarian, Yale University

Susan Gibbons was appointed university librarian at Yale University in July 2011. She earned an MLS and MA in history from Indiana University, professional MBA from the University of Massachusetts, and a doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Rochester.

Gibbons held library positions at Indiana University and University of Massachusetts, Amherst before moving to the University of Rochester in 2000, where she worked as the director of digital library initiatives before moving into administration. Gibbons was appointed in 2008 as the vice provost and the Andrew H. and Janet Dayton Neilly Dean of River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

She is well known in the library world, most significantly for the library user studies at Rochester she has undertaken since 2004. In collaboration with an anthropologist, Gibbons determined how faculty and students do their academic work, find information, and make use of the physical and technological resources offered by the libraries. The results have led to service, collections, and physical space changes in the River Campus Libraries designed to better meet user needs. Gibbons has given talks around the world on this work, which has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2007 she co-edited "Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester" (ACRL Publications), and published her own book, The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student: Making the Connections (ALA Editions).

Kevin M. Guthrie

President of ITHAKA

Kevin M. Guthrie is an executive and entrepreneur with expertise in high technology and not-for-profit management. Mr. Guthrie was the founding president of JSTOR (1995) and Ithaka (2004), and oversaw their merger in 2010 to form ITHAKA.

Previously Mr. Guthrie started his own software development company that served the needs of college and professional football teams, and later served as a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he authored The New York Historical Society: Lessons from One Nonprofit's Long Struggle for Survival (Jossey Bass). His diverse background also includes experience as a professional football player, a sports broadcaster and producer, and a consultant for an Oscar-winning motion picture.

Mr. Guthrie holds a bachelor of science in engineering in civil engineering from Princeton University and a master of business administration from Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Sari Chang, and their three children.

Curtis L. Kendrick

Alexandra W. Logue

Research Professor, Center for Advanced Study in Education at the City University of New York (CUNY)

Dr. Alexandra Logue is a research professor in CASE (the Center for Advanced Study in Education) of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), with particular responsibility for research and scholarship concerning college student success. Dr. Logue received her AB in Psychology and her PhD in experimental psychology, both from Harvard University. Her general research area is learning and motivation, with special research interests in choice behavior, self-control, and food aversions and preferences.

Dr. Logue is an internationally known behavioral scientist. She has published more than 120 articles and chapters, primarily on quantitative models of choice behavior, and has served on the editorial boards of many prestigious journals. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. The recipient of the American Psychological Association's Hake Award for excellence in bridging basic and applied research, Dr. Logue is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, The Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Following graduate school, Dr. Logue joined the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she rose to become associate dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences and chair of the Department of Psychology.

In 1995, she began her six-year tenure as dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College of the City University of New York. During her tenure at Baruch, five Weissman faculty became CUNY Distinguished Professors, and three others received CUNY's New Faculty Research Award. At Baruch she oversaw the receipt of several landmark gifts, significantly increased external funding for faculty research, initiated several new interdisciplinary master's degrees, and instituted an annual conference on teaching and technology that grew to serve the entire CUNY system.

In 2001, Dr. Logue became New York Institute of Technology's provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, directing NYIT's New York, global, and online academic programs in teaching, research, and service. She supervised the libraries, academic computing, academic planning, initiatives in teaching and learning with technology, and research centers. She was also the chief liaison with the faculty and their labor representatives (AAUP), serving as the lead negotiator for a new five-year collective bargaining agreement. At NYIT, Dr. Logue oversaw the initiation of several new undergraduate and graduate programs and restructured several units, resulting in significant savings as well as program improvements.

In 2006, Dr. Logue began service as special advisor to the chancellor, as well as associate university provost, of CUNY, a 24-campus system of close to 500,000 students. Her responsibilities included supervision of the university's performance management process and of system-wide academic affairs projects. From 2008 to 2014, she served as the chief academic officer (executive vice chancellor and university provost) of the CUNY system, with responsibilities for all of CUNY's academic programs, academic technology, enrollment management, faculty, institutional research, libraries, and students. Some of the significant iniatives that she led during this time included construction of CUNY's 2012-2016 Master Plan, establishment of a phased retirement policy for faculty, randomized controlled trials of several major CUNY programs (including obtaining significant external funds to support these RCTs), establishment of the CUNY (multi-college) School of Public Health and the hiring of its first permanent dean, adoption of more effective student learning assessments, prohibition of all tobacco use on CUNY property, and the creation and effecting of Pathways, a set of policies for easing transfer of students' credits within the CUNY system.

Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr.

Assistant to the President, Northwestern University

Eugene Y. Lowe, Jr. has served as assistant to the president of Northwestern University since 1999. He joined the senior administration of the University in 1995 as associate provost for faculty affairs. He also holds faculty appointments in the Religious Studies Department in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education and Social Policy, where he teaches regularly in the master's program in Higher Education Administration and Policy.

He has served as principal investigator for the Mellon postdoctoral program in the humanities since 1996, and chaired university-wide committees on the status of underrepresented minorities and integrity in intercollegiate athletics. In 2008, he began serving as the coordinator of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program. Mr. Lowe also represents Northwestern on the Faculty Advisory Council of the Illinois Board of Higher Education and on the Senior Diversity Officers Group of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.

His writings about religion, race, and American culture have appeared in a number of books and journals, including the recently published Encyclopedia of Religion in America (CQ Press, 2010). He served as a member of the Teagle Foundation-sponsored working group of the American Academy of Religion on the religious studies major and liberal education. His book, Promise and Dilemma: Perspectives on Racial Diversity and Higher Education (Princeton University Press, 1999), is based on work sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

He is a trustee of Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, and Seabury Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, and has served as president of the Board of Episcopal Charities and Community Services in Chicago.

Carol A. Mandel

Steven G. Poskanzer

Chair, President, Carleton College

Steven G. Poskanzer became Carleton’s 11th president in August, 2010. A scholar of higher education law, Poskanzer’s research focuses on issues of academic freedom and how colleges and universities seek to achieve educational goals in a complex legal and policy environment. At each institution where he has worked, Poskanzer has also made a point of teaching students in the classroom. Last fall he taught a seminar, “Legal Issues in Higher Education,” to Carleton students.

Before coming to Carleton, Poskanzer held senior administrative and academic positions at both private and public universities. This breadth of experience makes him somewhat unusual among college presidents.

President Poskanzer received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1980 and a law degree from Harvard University in 1983. After practicing law briefly in Washington, D.C., his entire career has been spent in higher education. He first worked in the Office of the General Counsel at the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the University's Associate General Counsel. He then spent a year as an American Council on Education Fellow back at Princeton, working as an assistant to the University’s Provost. In 1993, Poskanzer moved to the University of Chicago, where he served as Executive Assistant to the President and, among other duties, was responsible for the University’s Public Affairs department and for policy planning for the Board of Trustees.

In 1997, Poskanzer shifted from private to public higher education, joining the State University of New York (SUNY). Initially based in Albany at SUNY’s System Administration, he quickly rose to the position of Vice Provost for the 64-campus System and headed the Office of Academic Affairs. From 2001-2010, Poskanzer served as President of SUNY New Paltz. His time in New Paltz was marked by a visible transformation in the College’s selectivity, retention, and graduation rate of students; the level of resources devoted to hiring full time faculty; and an unprecedented set of the physical improvement to the campus (including the acquisition of a 40-acre land bank for future campus growth). As a result of these enhancements to academic quality, New Paltz was acclaimed the “Hottest Small State School” in the nation byNewsweek magazine.

As President of Carleton, Poskanzer devised and led a comprehensive strategic planning process that brought together faculty, students, staff, alumni, and parents to chart the College’s course for the coming decade. This plan, Carleton’s Future, is now being implemented. The last few years at Carleton have been marked by a dramatic increase in the number of applications, along with continued success in faculty recruitment.

Steve is married to Dr. Jane Nofer Poskanzer, a clinical child psychologist who specializes in the diagnosis of autism and related disabilities. The couple has two children: Jill, a rising senior at Carleton; and Craig, an Exeter graduate who will be a first-year student at Princeton University in the fall.

Michael H. Schill

President, University of Oregon

Michael H. Schill is a national expert on real estate and housing policy, deregulation, finance and discrimination. He has written or edited three books and over 40 articles on various aspects of housing, real estate and property law. He is an active member of a variety of public advisory councils, editorial boards and community organizations. Before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School, Dean Schill was Dean and Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, the Wilf Family Professor in Property Law at New York University School of Law, and professor of urban planning at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. From 1994 to 2004, Dean Schill served as the director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Prior to that, Schill was a tenured professor of law and real estate at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.

Jeffrey A. Sine

Co-Founder & Partner, The Raine Group, LLC

Jeffrey Sine is the co-founder and a partner of Raine, a merchant bank focused on advising and investing in the global entertainment, sports, and digital media industry. Prior to founding Raine in 2009, Mr. Sine was vice chairman and global head of Technology, Media & Telecommunications Investment Banking at UBS Investment Bank. In 1991 Mr. Sine was global head of Media Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, and named global co-head of the firm’s combined Media and Communications Investment Banking in 2001.

Mr. Sine has sat on the boards of The Manhattan Theatre Club, The International Radio and Television Society, The Museum of Television and Radio Media Center, The USC Annenberg School of Communication / Law Center Joint Venture, and is currently chair of the Board of Trustees of American University in Washington DC He has produced numerous Broadway, Off-Broadway, touring, and West End plays and musicals. He has been nominated for six Tony Awards and is a three-time Tony Award Winner. He lives in New York with his wife, Samira, and has three sons and one daughter.

Mr. Sine received his bachelor of arts from American University and his juris doctor from the University of Southern California.

Herbert S. Winokur Jr.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Capricorn Holdings, Inc.

Herbert S. "Pug" Winokur Jr. has served as the chairman and chief executive officer of the private investment firm Capricorn Holdings, Inc. since 1987. He also has been the managing general partner of a number of affiliated limited partnerships, whose goals are to invest in companies with the potential of long-term superior capital appreciation through financial or operating restructuring and industry consolidation. These partnerships controlled companies whose aggregate revenues exceeded $3 billion, and which employed more than 25,000 people. From 1973 to 1987, Mr. Winokur served as senior executive vice president and director of the Penn Central Corporation, and held senior management positions at Pacific Holding Corporation, Victor Palmieri and Company, and Pennsylvania Company.

From 1969 to the early 1970s, Mr. Winokur was co-founder and chairman of ICF Inc., a management consulting and investment firm specializing in policy planning for senior government and business officials, and also concentrating on socially oriented investments. He served as a U.S. Army officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1967 to 1969. He is an honorary director of the UCLA Medical Center Board of Advisors, a former trustee of Greenwich Academy, and a former co-chair of the New York Historical Society. He currently serves on the boards of the National Humanities Center, Ithaka Harbors, Inc., and Squash Haven, which he co-founded. He serves on the Board of Advisors of Columbia Journalism Review, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.

Mr. Winokur served as a fellow of the Harvard Corporation and on the board of Harvard Management Company. He earned an artium baccalaureus, artium magister, and a doctor of philosophy from Harvard University, the last in decision and control theory.

JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.